FEWER WORDS BUT STILL A TON
When the flashlight flicked on behind him, David froze. Panic rose from his chest and he felt his heart beating a mile a minute, but he tried as hard as he could to keep level. Until whoever it was attacked him, they weren't the enemy. They aren't the enemy. They aren't the enemy, he repeated over and over again in his head, begging that little nagging corner of his mind to listen. But it wasn't.
They weren't saying anything. In the darkness, with the fact that David couldn't see who they were, the tiny corner of his mind that was trying to convince the rest of him that this person wasn't the enemy was losing. Who was it? Which one of his captors had caught up to him? How quickly would they kill him; would they let anyone find his body?
So lost was he in his mind's entanglement of all the possible questions and ways that he could die, that when the person finally spoke, survival instinct finally took over. He whirled around on unsteady legs, staring the person down and speaking, his voice raspy from lack of use when he said, "Don't come any closer!"
Had he been stable, he'd have recognized her. He may not have been the most social person on the compound when he was there, but he did a lot of people watching, and he'd seen her a few times. He knew who she was, but between fear, the brainwashing of torture and the frigid cold and light drizzle of freezing rain, two and two weren't clicking together. The voice had a very vague familiarity, but it wasn't clicking together in his head.
The only people he'd probably have recognized right away were Eloise, Rae, Leah, Vienna or Evan. Probably. His closest friends. All that registered was the fact that she was shadowed by the darkness behind the flashlight, and the brightness of the light was practically blinding him. All he'd seen for the past three months was darkness, with occasional shreds of light from the window across the hall.
"Wh-who's there?" he asked. "Who are you?"
His posture was defeated but defensive. Aching but alive. Hopeful but fearful. Tired but determined.